Steve Waldman & the FCC: Accountability Reporting

"Heavy On Problems, Light On Solutions" is the headline response by Columbia Journalism Review to the recent U.S. Federal Communications Commission report on the state of news reporting around the country.

From the FCC report, "The Information Needs of Communities" (pdf):

In most ways today’s media landscape is more vibrant than ever, offering faster and cheaper distribution networks, fewer barriers to entry, and more ways to consume information. ...

Yet, in part because of the digital revolution, serious problems have arisen, as well. Most significant among them: in many communities, we now face a shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting. This is likely to lead to the kinds of problems that are, not surprisingly, associated with a lack of accountability—more government waste, more local corruption, less effective schools, and other serious community problems.

Lead author Steve Waldman highlights several of the report's recommendations in an interview on the radio program On the Media:

[T]he government needs to clean up the tax code because right now there's all sorts of ambiguities and problems with the way IRS deals with nonprofit media. For instance, the IRS ruled against a newspaper that wanted to convert from being a commercial entity to being a nonprofit entity. That's really unfortunate because that could be a great model. There are lots of newspapers that could survive. They just can't make 30 percent profit margins anymore. ...

The federal government currently spends about a billion dollars a year on advertising. A lot of it goes to national entertainment programming. It could be Army recruiting, Census Bureau, safety. So we proposed why not try to target some of that to local media. ...

One way or another, if we want to have accountability reporting, citizens are going to have to pay for some of it. And that can't just be rich people. That has to be everyone.